Olympus brings Pen story to lifeBy
Mike Tomkins(Friday, July 10, 2009 - 14:53 EDT)Olympus Europe is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its PEN camera series and the successful launch of its modern-day equivalent - the Olympus E-P1, which is sold under the PEN brandname in Europe - with a rather cool video entitled "The PEN Story".

Created using stop-motion photography and a whole lot of time and energy, the PEN Story video clearly pays homage to the work of Japanese artist Takeuchi Taijin. Takeuchi-san directed the video "A Wolf Loves Pork", made using over 1,300 photo prints and now having drawn over two million views on YouTube. Olympus' PEN Story is no less complex, with the company noting that it required the capture of some 60,000 pictures, from which 9,600 prints were made.

Both videos tell a tale using the same technique, with a stream of photo prints overlaid around an apartment, and animated to serve as a pathway along which the narrative unfolds. In the case of "A Wolf Loves Pork", a boy in a wolf costume chases a papier-mâché pig through a Japanese town, and the video is accompanied by the music of Nariaki Miyata. Olympus' PEN Story applies a similar technique with a few extra twists to follow the life of a young boy as his life unfolds. For the musical accompaniment, Olympus chose "Down Below" by Johannes Stankowski, with both the full song and a ringtone version being available for download as free MP3s on the Pen Story website.